Currently, in the field of premise protection systems, existing event communication systems typically send event information or premise data in the form of digital data to a monitoring center. The premise data is usually received, authenticated, and formatted to a standard protocol format by receiving equipment within the monitoring center. The receiving equipment passes the premise data to an automation system computer for storage and distribution. This automation system computer passes the data and general customer account information to an operator's terminal. Using the data, the monitoring center personnel can determine what steps should be taken for each incoming report.
In recent years, the types and quantity of data collected by premise protection systems have increased. With the additional data, such as Audio/Video (A/V) data and other non-standard alarm data, the monitoring center receives several pieces of information that need to be evaluated to determine the most appropriate response. Some monitoring center locations now require that in addition to the standard premise control data, another type of verification signal be provided in order to keep emergency response organizations, such as the police and fire departments, informed. The verification signal would typically originate from some type of A/V device.
Several different premise protection system configurations exist. FIG. 10 illustrates an example of an existing premise protection system 100 that may be associated with A/V equipment 110. Both the premise protection system 100 and the A/V equipment 110 may communicate with a monitoring center 140 including receiving equipment 150, automation equipment 160, and an operator's terminal 170. While the premise protection system 100 may implement a first network 120 for communication, the A/V equipment may implement a second discrete network 130 for communication with the receiving equipment 150 of the monitoring center 140.
Thus, the A/V equipment may include one or more totally independent A/V devices programmed to communicate collected data to a specific destination address when the data are triggered. The premise protection system may only receive an input signal notifying it that an A/V event activation occurred. Thus, the A/V equipment directs the A/V data to a pre-programmed specific destination address. In other systems, the A/V device communicates its data back through a premise control system of the premise protection system. The premise control system is often used as the communicator only and doesn't retain any of the data passed.
Concerns may arise when the A/V data is passed through the premise control system during the communication and the A/V data is sent as part of the premise event message. Using this method, the central station receiving equipment may be communicating for an extended time period while the A/V data is being received. This extended time period could delay other potentially important premise data signals from being received.
To avoid this delay, one solution is to add additional equipment and communication lines to handle the increased traffic load. This solution places a higher cost on the equipment requirements of the monitoring center and the personnel required to maintain the monitoring center.
Currently, in most cases, the link between the premise control system and the A/V device is limited. Usually the link includes a premise output trigger to signal the A/V device from the premise control system to start recording data or to send captured data. Future systems may be more integrated as the premise control system may have the capability to connect with and control more devices. The volume of data communicated to the monitoring center will also increase. Currently, in some systems, completion of a premise control transmission may consume approximately twenty seconds. Minimization of transmission time requires efficient management.
A/V device signals usually contain much more data than what is typically passed from the premise control system to the monitoring center. The most commonly used communication transport medium today is the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). The typical premise protection control system communicates over a PSTN phone line at a baud rate of 300 baud. Accordingly, if for example, a high resolution picture were sent, a significant amount of additional time would be required to transmit the image for interpretation at the monitoring center.
The delay in receiving the A/V data prevents the monitoring center from responding in a timely fashion with the most appropriate response. For example, if the photograph shows that a family pet caused an alarm but because of the transmission delay, the monitoring center had already dispatched the police, then the extended transmission time contributed to a false alarm. Due to this type of communication delay, many of the A/V devices today have separate communicators used to send A/V data at substantially higher communication rates and over a variety of communication mediums. The A/V data is usually not passed back to the premise control system due to the communication bandwidth limitation and the limited storage capacity of the premise control system.
In this scenario and as shown in FIG. 10, when the A/V data is sent as an independent signal, the monitoring center may be required to determine how to link the independent event signals together. The additional data is generally sent to different destination addresses within the monitoring center in order to avoid overloading central receiving equipment with high bandwidth data. The data must then be retrieved and linked with the premise event data. Since the data come from independent devices, linking received data becomes a challenge.
Because premise protection systems send digital alarm event information as well as additional non-standard data information (video, audio, data) to the monitoring center, improved data management is necessary. The existing model involves either having independent transmission paths that do not share data or interact with each other, or burdening the alarm receiving equipment with the task of receiving both the control data and the additional data simultaneously, thus limiting the capacity, response time, and the ability of the receiver to process other alarms.
Accordingly, a solution is needed for intelligently routing data in order to avoid overloading a particular destination within the central monitoring center. A solution is also needed for routing data efficiently in order to improve response times and the ability to use all available data in determining an appropriate response.